Wednesday, 30 May 2007

Egyptian English (Egyptian B te2eela)

I was always amazed how Egyptians are so innovative in everything including languages. The problem is that Egyptians can pronounce both B's but always in the wrong place(ie, p like poy and b like beoble) and some people just can't so they invented the heavy b and the light b.
I always had problems with this, as I was never taught the difference in school.
When I was working in Algeria, I had a call from one of our accountants who asked me to give him the name of the bank he was going to. It was bnp paribas!!, I told him the name and he wanted to write it down, and so I had to spell the name for him. I tried the b heavy and light but it was me who got confused so he asked me to tell him the position of the..........3asaya!!!!.
He actually asked me, el b omm 3asaya fo2 walla 3asaya ta7t, I started giving him the 3asaya positions for the whole name and at the end he just said"dah eh el esm el menayyel dah? yetnete2 ezzay dah?.
Second thing that amazed me was the F&V. People think that Egyptians can't pronounce the V. Well actually they can, only in three words that don't contain any V's; ViVa(FIFA), caVeteria, and maVia, everything else is pronounced in F.
Third, Egyptians are very bad in English grammar for a main reason which is that they think in their own language, Arabic which is totally different than English. I actually heard someone saying,"I'm gonna drink a cigarette", which is just a translation of his thoughts into English.
Fourth, the first thing I was told in school was to listen, listen to the teacher, listen to the news, listen to the actors in movies, and actually that was the best way that worked for everyone and is always recommended to anyone who tries to learn English.

1 comment:

Mohaly said...

you want to say zat egyptions is donnot ezpeek well english?!
you no nasing at oll!
we haz bervect english!

contact me if u need translation :)